Thursday, September 20, 2007

Every foochow family was big then in the 50's and 60's. Five or six children were considered normal sized brood. A Hii family had 14 children and my own grandfather had 20, with three consecutive grandmothers.

How did my grandfather have so many children? My own or first grandmother died at 38 and my grandfather married a second time to help look after his nine children. Second grandmother was very hard working and finally was exhausted from her work. She too died quite young. Then my grandfather married again so that he could have someone to accompany him in his old age. It all worked out very well then.

Other parents had more children because they needed the help in the farm and there was no family planning at that time. Some fathers wanted boys, so when a woman had only girls, she would continue to have children until she had a boy. It was common then to have seven girls and then a boy. This was what the Foochows would call, a family of seven fairies and a princeq. One uncle had seven girls than a boy, and than two girls and then some more boys, totalling 14. That is a fantastic family of high achievers, lots of graduates, engineers, doctors, and teachers.

while some were so well blessed by "thousand sons and ten thousand grandchildren", some need to adopt.

Many adoption stories do not turn out well.

Here is a tragic one.

Old Mr. Ting (name is changed) would like to have children but after 8 years, Mrs. Ting did not seem to be able to have any. Mr. Ting even used the traditional method of "borrowing a cockerelto get the hen to lay eggs". He asked his good friend to visit his wife without discussing with her. He also promised his friend a big ang pow of gift of money if his wife conceived.

Whether anything happened between his wife and his good friend, the wife did not conceive.

A few years later, the couple decided to adopt a daughter.This girl however grew up to be exactly like her natural mother: quarrelsome, shameless,untidy and disrespectful. She was very ahead of her time in terms of thinking and dressing. And in no time, she was bringing a gang of difficult boys home to harrass her adopted parents.

In order to ensure that she could be taken care of by a strong man, the now older parents chose man to marry her. And indeed they did find a very strong and powerful man.

However the girl did not behave well at all and she was stealing from her husband's little tuck shop. She did not do any housework at all.

One day she found her biological mother and decided to join her, thinking that everything she had then was really rubbish. So she packed her stuff while the husband was away and got a few of her gangster friends to come in to help her.Just as she was about to move the lorry out the husband came back by chance.

He tried to pull her back, and the engine of the car was already on. The three men were looking at them, quite fearful actually so it was lucky they did not join in the husband and wife fight.

The good for nothing woman scratched his face and all of a sudden he just took up a piece of wood and gave her a blow.

She died there - just like that, with all the witnesses around.

What was wrong with the woman? Was she possessed? The poor husband went to the police to make a report, but the girl's family dropped the case and that was the end of the story.